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On 1st August 2019, the Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust (CST) which has monitored anti-Semitic activity since 1984 reported a record increase in anti-Semitic incidents for the first six months; 892 in total, a 10 per cent increase on the same period last year when the total stood at 810.[1]

Although by no means stating that it is the only causative factor, the chair of the British Board of Deputies for Jews, Marie van der Zyl, stated in a Sky News interview that there is a correlation between the rise in anti-Semitic hate crime to the accession to and consolidation of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in September 2015. 55 of the incidents reported to the CST related to the Labour Party in the months of February and March comprising over half of the 100 incidents compiled for those two months Ms van der Zyl theorised that the publicity accruing from the steady flow of allegations of anti-Jewish behaviour within Labour and the tardy responses of the leadership has given permission to people with an animus towards Jews to act out their hostility (in the same way that the vote for Brexit gave permission to racists of other hues to verbally and physically abuse people of colour and from EU countries).

Labour’s anti-Semitism malaise has recently been solidified by two developments: ongoing investigation by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into institutional racism (only the second political party to have been the subject of an EHRC enquiry since the British National Party) and the BBC Panorama documentary made by the renowned investigative journalist John Ware into the rise of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and the how it has been dealt with by the Labour leadership and its bureaucracy. It was a programme that so upset the Labour high command that it has requested that it be taken off the BBC I-player service.

Since much (but by no means all) of the controversy on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has revolved around whether criticism of Zionism and the State of Israel can be considered anti-Semitic with supporters of Jeremy Corbyn arguing that allegations of anti-Semitism are made in bad faith to deflect criticism of Israeli human rights abuses and war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and/or to undermine Corbyn’s leadership of the party from embittered “Blairites” with the backing of all-powerful and secretive Israel lobby. These include the small but vocal minority group Jewish Voice for Labour which is avowedly antizionist. They point to life-long antiracist and human rights campaigning by Corbyn as evidence that it is impossible for him to be anti-Semitic.

Corbyn’s critics assert that, at best, he is ignorant of how contemporary anti-Semitism manifests itself in parts of the Left, particularly that left milieu which he has spent his entire political career operating in. Either he has been, in an ironic categorisation by Dave Hill of the CST, “the unluckiest antiracist in history” due to his, coincidental or not, sharing of political space with Holocaust deniers, Islamist hate preachers, 9/11 conspiracy theorists and terrorist supporters, in the course of his deep and long. commitment to the cause of Palestinian rights. Or, if not anti-Semitic himself, he has enabled anti-Semitism to grow on his watch just as Donald Trump has enabled and assisted in the growth of racism and race prejudice since becoming President of the USA.

Since one of the kernels of the Labour anti-Semitism dispute relates to Israel and Zionism, I wish to discuss the origins of the document at the heart of it, the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA)’s definition of anti-Semitism and, especially, the clauses that relate to criticisms of Israel in order to arrive at some sort of definitional clarity.

IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and controversy

The descriptor of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is:

A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. (Lipstadt, 2019)

The IHRA definition came out of the EUMC (European Union Monitoring Centre) on Racism and Xenophobia, now the Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) Working Definition on Ant-Semitism. This definition, in a tweaked but practically identical form, was later adopted by the US State Department, 34 international governments, the UK government plus the devolved Scottish and Welsh administrations. After lengthy, not to say tortuous, deliberations, it was adopted by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in late 2018.

The aspects of the IHRA definition that have caused greatest controversy relate to Israel. It offers examples of things that may be termed anti-Semitic ‘taking into account the overall context’:

■ Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist or settler-colonial enterprise.

■ Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not demanded or expected of any other democratic nation.

■ Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism(e.g. the blood libel, Jews killed Christ and Jewish ambitions for world dominance as laid out in the notorious Tsarist forgery The Learned Protocols of the Elders of Zion or in the powers of the Rothschild banking dynasty) to characterise Israel and Israelis.

■ Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis (e.g. Shoah/Holocaust inversion or comparing Israeli actions to the Holocaust and the visual portrayal of such in the superimposition of the swastika onto the Star of David).

■ Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel.

The definition then emphasises that, on the other hand, ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against other countries cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic (Hirsh, 2018).

Proponents of IHRA argue that the definition does not prevent advocacy on behalf of the human and national rights of the Palestinian Arab populations living under Israeli control or who live as refugees. It does not prevent condemnation of things the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank; the creeping annexation of the West Bank, the daily hardships imposed on the Arabs by Israeli defence and security agencies or the conduct of the Israeli military in the three recent wars with Hamas in Gaza or the continuing blockade of Gaza by Israel (as well as by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority). It is what they regard as the delegitimization of the State of Israel through campaigns like Israeli Apartheid Weeks and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). It is my personal belief that the ‘double standards’ and ‘similar criticism’ examples listed above require greater elaboration.

Anti-Zionist opponents of IHRA assert that the Jewish groups involved in its construction are, in the words of David Hirsh, acting in ‘bad faith’. Hirsh sees as ‘implicit’ in this accusation the belief that these Jewish groups are not really working in the interests of combatting anti-Semitism. Rather, he states that ‘they are secretly prepared to the sacrifice the struggle against “real” anti-Semitism by co-opting its political capital to a dishonest attempt to de-legitimise criticism of Israel’. (Hirsh: p.146).

In this ‘anti-Zionist narrative ‘, Hirsh, explains, these Jewish groups are conceived of as being ‘white’ and not antiracist; as part of the struggle between Israel and Palestine; and neither part of the Jewish struggle against anti-Semitismnot part of the global struggle against anti-black racism (Hirsh: p.146). As this contestation over the definition of anti-Semitism has become one of the fault lines in the often rancorous debates within the Labour Party over contemporary anti-Semitism and, indeed, among the global left over contemporary “anti-imperialism it is necessary to go back to the factors that gave rise to the need felt by many Jewish groups to formulate a contemporary definition of anti=Semitism.

Genealogy of IHRA Definition.

The origins of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism lie in the creation of a post-Berlin Wall human rights and democratic architecture for Europe. The animus for it came from events that occurred at the UN World Conference Against Racism (WACR) in September 2001.

At the 1990 Copenhagen Conference of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), commitments were made to combat all forms of racial and ethnic hatred, anti-Semitism xenophobia and discrimination. Preceding as it did the fall of Communism in East-Central Europe, the OSCE as a forum where Europe, the USSR and the USA could talk to each other, was ideally suited for the task of attempting to shape the post-Cold War new Europe, in particular by solidifying states’ commitment to the principles of human rights and democracy. The commitments entered into at Copenhagen were given the stamp of approval by heads of state in the ‘Charter of Paris for a New Europe’. (Hirsh, p.141)

In September 2001 the WARC was held in Durban in the newly democratic, post-apartheid South Africa. This conference took place in the shadow of the breakdown of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000. At the conference there was a determined campaign to portray Zionism as the main exemplar of racism in the world and an organised and hostile anti-Israel fervour throughout the week-long conference. This atmosphere spilled over into overt hatred of Jews. One account by Ronald Eissens and published by ICARE, an anti-racist European NGO of a parallel NGO conference at a huge cricket ground gives a flavour of what it was like:

Jews were actively discriminated [against], shouted down, meetings on Anti-Semitism were hijacked by Palestinian Caucus members and supporters and people who protested against all this were branded ‘Zionist pig lovers’ and Jew lovers.

On the big September 1st demonstration, the most dominant slogan (of many) was Free Palestine. Pamphlets were handed out with a portrait of Hitler displaying the text:

What if I had won? The good things: There would be No Israel and No Palestinian’s blood shed – and the rest is your guess. The bad things: I wouldn’t have allowed the making of the new beetle – and the rest is your guess (Hirsh: pp.141-42).

Following these tempestuous (and for many Jewish delegates traumatic) events, occurring as they did against the background of the breakdown of the Israel/Palestine peace process and the later attacks by Islamist fanatics on the USA on 11th September 2001 and creating in the words of Eissen ‘a dark cloud of hate descending upon this world’; attempts were made to raise the issue of anti-Semitism within the European Union. After meetings between the EUMC director Beate Winkler and European Jewish Congress (EJC) officials a report on anti-Semitism in each EU member state was commissioned with a composite analysis of the reports to be published by the Centre for Anti-Semitic Research at Berlin’s Technical University. This report in 2003, however, was unfavourably received by the EUMC Monitoring Board for attributing much of the blame in the rise in anti-Semitism to Muslim communities. A second report in 2004 laid the blame for the majority of anti-Semitic activity on the far right.

More significantly though, the EUMC had noted in its 2004 report on anti-Semitism ‘the lack of a common definition’ and requested one from a small group of NGOs. What was to become the Working Definition which later morphed into the IHRA definition was disseminated in March 2004 and was intended to serve as a template for police services and antiracist campaigners, for use on the streets rather than incorporation into national legislation. However. it was expected to seep into universal usage by the relevant parties and this is what eventually happened with the All-Party Parliamentary Body into Anti-Semitism in the UK recommending its adoption in 2005 as did a number of similar initiatives around the world. It was in its ultimate form, the IHRA definition, adopted by the UK government in December 2016.

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is the outcome of lobbying by Jewish antiracist organisations in Europe in response to the rising levels of anti-Semitism in Europe and the new forms in which it is manifests itself; Islamist Jew hatred and far left opposition to the State of Israel as well as the traditional (and still active) far right Judeophobia. It needs to be pointed out that small but vociferous antizionist Jewish groups such as Corbyn supporting Jewish Voice for Labour oppose the IHRA definition. It is alleged that Jeremy Corbyn took so long to finally endorse IHRA because he feared he would fall foul of it. Opponents of IHRA assert that it has led to a chilling effect on pro-Palestinian advocacy and campaigning with campus events such as Israeli Apartheid Week being subjected to restrictions and community events in support of Palestinians being prohibited such as the London Borough of Tower Hamlet’s cancellation of a recent pro-Palestinian bicycle ride because of (alleged) fears that it would fall foul of IHRA.

Supporters of IHRA argue that it does not forbid any criticism of any aspect of any Israeli policy. It is opposition to the existence of the State of Israel and the demonisation of Israel as some sort of unique evil in the world based on a reading of Zionism as a fundamentally racist, supremacist, settler-colonial ideology that IHRA advocates see as anti-Semitic. They point to the use of ancient, conspiratorial anti-Jewish tropes and stereotypes by opponents of Israel’s existence such as “Zionist” control of global financial, media and political systems through the Rothschild dynasty and the invocation of the ‘blood libel’ when accusing Israel of the killing of Palestinian children as evidence of this modern anti-Semitism.

Demanding that Israel not be subjected to demands for behavioural standards not required or expected of other democratic nations is arguably vague. This may refer to the relatively less vitriol that the USA, UK and other partners of the “coalition of the willing” have received for dubious practices in the War on Terror and Iraq and Afghanistan wars than Israel attracts whenever conflict breaks out in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The “double standards” criterion may have more validity when one considers the records of some of Israel’s most strident critics in relation to other conflicts and sites of human rights violations in the world. There is the reluctance of Jeremy Corbyn to utter the words in relation to Syria “I condemn the actions of President Assad and his ally, President Putin” and of President Maduro of Venezuela; George Galloway’s saluting of the “courage and indefatigability” of Saddam Hussein; Noam Chomsky’s defence of Diane Johnstone’s denial of the Srebrenica massacre and, earlier, of the Khmer Rouge; John Pilger’s defence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of the “anti-fascist” Putin and of Slobodan Milosevic and suspended Labour MP Chris Williamson summoning up of the academic network headed up by the Bristol University political sociologist David Miller (none of whom have any specialism in the area) dedicated to the denial of Assad’s chemical weapons atrocities to fight for his reinstatement. Williamson has form in relation to Syria through his gushing admiration for the fake journalistic work of the Assad devotee Vanessa Beeley which includes the slandering of the Syrian volunteer civil defence force the White Helmets as NATO backed Islamist terrorist. The positions of anti-Israel activists and propagandists on other conflicts looks like a good subject for further empirical and scholastic research but there are enough anecdotes such as the double and treble standards cited above as well as the silences from those cut from similar political cloth on other occupations such as Tibet by China, Western Sahara by Morocco and West Irian by Indonesia.

Denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the form of a nation state would not be seen as a priori anti-Semitic if those doing the denying were consistent across the board and opposed, on principle, all nationalist movements, all separatist tendencies and ethnostates. In which case Kurds, Catalans, Scots, Baluchis, Basques or any ethnic or national minority one can think of would not be allowed to assert this right.

Regarding perhaps the most inflammatory aspect of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel discourse and practice, comparisons between Israeli behaviour and that of the Nazis; a simple bland statement that Israel kills civilians just like the Nazis would not count as an anti-Semitic statement. But the trouble begins when anti-Israel protagonists appropriate the images and narratives of the Shoah/Holocaust as part of their linguistic armoury. Displaying images of the swastika superimposed on the Star of David, of Israeli leaders depicted as wearing Hitler type moustaches and the falsification of history in order to prove Zionist collaboration with the Nazi implementation of the Shoah or that Hitler supported Zionism do incite hatred and ultimately have anti-Semitic consequences. It is no coincidence, in my view, that KGB and Communist Party functionaries who prosecuted the Soviet anti-Zionist campaign with such vigour in the 1960s, 70s and 80s later became involved in far-right anti-Semitic groups like Pamiyat in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.

Perhaps the IHRA definition is too blunt an instrument for dealing with anti-Semitism in the same way that Prevent is a well-meaning but blunt instrument for dealing with extremist and the threat of terrorism (white far right as well as Islamist far right); perhaps modern anti-Semitism is better dealt with existing hate-crime and public order legislation. Subjecting false Zionist-Nazi analogies to the rigours of scholastic inquiry may well be a better method of refuting such calumnies. It is worth pointing out that academic debate and inquiry around the creation of the State of Israel is excluded from the purview of the IHRA and that the IHRA definition has individual institutional not statutory remit. But IHRA is, in my view, a legitimate response to the increasing levels of mutating, shape-shifting as well as “traditional” anti-Semitism (other forms of hate crime are equally deserving of such a response) which events in the Labour Party in the last three years have exemplified. It does not have to be a means of restricting freedom of speech or journalistic or academic inquiry.

References:

David Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisemitism London: Routledge 2018.

[1] Two-thirds of these 892 incidents took place in the UK cities with the largest Jewish populations; Greater London and Greater Manchester. Over a third involved social media and among the them included physical assault, the painting of anti-Semitic graffiti on the homes of Holocaust survivors and the portrayal of Gaza as a Nazi style concentration camp. The CST do say that is not clear whether the total increase is due to better reporting or an actual quantitative increase in anti-Semitic abuse; probably a combination of both. (Daily Mirror, 1 August 2019)

⏩ Barry Gilheany has joined the Jewish Labour Movement as an affiliate member and encourages fellow labour movement colleagues concerned about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem to do the same.

On 1st August 2019, the Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust (CST) which has monitored anti-Semitic activity since 1984 reported a record increase in anti-Semitic incidents for the first six months; 892 in total, a 10 per cent increase on the same period last year when the total stood at 810.[1]

Although by no means stating that it is the only causative factor, the chair of the British Board of Deputies for Jews, Marie van der Zyl, stated in a Sky News interview that there is a correlation between the rise in anti-Semitic hate crime to the accession to and consolidation of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in September 2015. 55 of the incidents reported to the CST related to the Labour Party in the months of February and March comprising over half of the 100 incidents compiled for those two months Ms van der Zyl theorised that the publicity accruing from the steady flow of allegations of anti-Jewish behaviour within Labour and the tardy responses of the leadership has given permission to people with an animus towards Jews to act out their hostility (in the same way that the vote for Brexit gave permission to racists of other hues to verbally and physically abuse people of colour and from EU countries).

Labour’s anti-Semitism malaise has recently been solidified by two developments: ongoing investigation by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into institutional racism (only the second political party to have been the subject of an EHRC enquiry since the British National Party) and the BBC Panorama documentary made by the renowned investigative journalist John Ware into the rise of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and the how it has been dealt with by the Labour leadership and its bureaucracy. It was a programme that so upset the Labour high command that it has requested that it be taken off the BBC I-player service.

Since much (but by no means all) of the controversy on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has revolved around whether criticism of Zionism and the State of Israel can be considered anti-Semitic with supporters of Jeremy Corbyn arguing that allegations of anti-Semitism are made in bad faith to deflect criticism of Israeli human rights abuses and war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and/or to undermine Corbyn’s leadership of the party from embittered “Blairites” with the backing of all-powerful and secretive Israel lobby. These include the small but vocal minority group Jewish Voice for Labour which is avowedly antizionist. They point to life-long antiracist and human rights campaigning by Corbyn as evidence that it is impossible for him to be anti-Semitic.

Corbyn’s critics assert that, at best, he is ignorant of how contemporary anti-Semitism manifests itself in parts of the Left, particularly that left milieu which he has spent his entire political career operating in. Either he has been, in an ironic categorisation by Dave Hill of the CST, “the unluckiest antiracist in history” due to his, coincidental or not, sharing of political space with Holocaust deniers, Islamist hate preachers, 9/11 conspiracy theorists and terrorist supporters, in the course of his deep and long. commitment to the cause of Palestinian rights. Or, if not anti-Semitic himself, he has enabled anti-Semitism to grow on his watch just as Donald Trump has enabled and assisted in the growth of racism and race prejudice since becoming President of the USA.

Since one of the kernels of the Labour anti-Semitism dispute relates to Israel and Zionism, I wish to discuss the origins of the document at the heart of it, the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA)’s definition of anti-Semitism and, especially, the clauses that relate to criticisms of Israel in order to arrive at some sort of definitional clarity.

IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and controversy

The descriptor of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is:

A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. (Lipstadt, 2019)

The IHRA definition came out of the EUMC (European Union Monitoring Centre) on Racism and Xenophobia, now the Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) Working Definition on Ant-Semitism. This definition, in a tweaked but practically identical form, was later adopted by the US State Department, 34 international governments, the UK government plus the devolved Scottish and Welsh administrations. After lengthy, not to say tortuous, deliberations, it was adopted by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in late 2018.

The aspects of the IHRA definition that have caused greatest controversy relate to Israel. It offers examples of things that may be termed anti-Semitic ‘taking into account the overall context’:

■ Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist or settler-colonial enterprise.

■ Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not demanded or expected of any other democratic nation.

■ Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism(e.g. the blood libel, Jews killed Christ and Jewish ambitions for world dominance as laid out in the notorious Tsarist forgery The Learned Protocols of the Elders of Zion or in the powers of the Rothschild banking dynasty) to characterise Israel and Israelis.

■ Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis (e.g. Shoah/Holocaust inversion or comparing Israeli actions to the Holocaust and the visual portrayal of such in the superimposition of the swastika onto the Star of David).

■ Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel.

The definition then emphasises that, on the other hand, ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against other countries cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic (Hirsh, 2018).

Proponents of IHRA argue that the definition does not prevent advocacy on behalf of the human and national rights of the Palestinian Arab populations living under Israeli control or who live as refugees. It does not prevent condemnation of things the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank; the creeping annexation of the West Bank, the daily hardships imposed on the Arabs by Israeli defence and security agencies or the conduct of the Israeli military in the three recent wars with Hamas in Gaza or the continuing blockade of Gaza by Israel (as well as by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority). It is what they regard as the delegitimization of the State of Israel through campaigns like Israeli Apartheid Weeks and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). It is my personal belief that the ‘double standards’ and ‘similar criticism’ examples listed above require greater elaboration.

Anti-Zionist opponents of IHRA assert that the Jewish groups involved in its construction are, in the words of David Hirsh, acting in ‘bad faith’. Hirsh sees as ‘implicit’ in this accusation the belief that these Jewish groups are not really working in the interests of combatting anti-Semitism. Rather, he states that ‘they are secretly prepared to the sacrifice the struggle against “real” anti-Semitism by co-opting its political capital to a dishonest attempt to de-legitimise criticism of Israel’. (Hirsh: p.146).

In this ‘anti-Zionist narrative ‘, Hirsh, explains, these Jewish groups are conceived of as being ‘white’ and not antiracist; as part of the struggle between Israel and Palestine; and neither part of the Jewish struggle against anti-Semitismnot part of the global struggle against anti-black racism (Hirsh: p.146). As this contestation over the definition of anti-Semitism has become one of the fault lines in the often rancorous debates within the Labour Party over contemporary anti-Semitism and, indeed, among the global left over contemporary “anti-imperialism it is necessary to go back to the factors that gave rise to the need felt by many Jewish groups to formulate a contemporary definition of anti=Semitism.

Genealogy of IHRA Definition.

The origins of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism lie in the creation of a post-Berlin Wall human rights and democratic architecture for Europe. The animus for it came from events that occurred at the UN World Conference Against Racism (WACR) in September 2001.

At the 1990 Copenhagen Conference of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), commitments were made to combat all forms of racial and ethnic hatred, anti-Semitism xenophobia and discrimination. Preceding as it did the fall of Communism in East-Central Europe, the OSCE as a forum where Europe, the USSR and the USA could talk to each other, was ideally suited for the task of attempting to shape the post-Cold War new Europe, in particular by solidifying states’ commitment to the principles of human rights and democracy. The commitments entered into at Copenhagen were given the stamp of approval by heads of state in the ‘Charter of Paris for a New Europe’. (Hirsh, p.141)

In September 2001 the WARC was held in Durban in the newly democratic, post-apartheid South Africa. This conference took place in the shadow of the breakdown of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000. At the conference there was a determined campaign to portray Zionism as the main exemplar of racism in the world and an organised and hostile anti-Israel fervour throughout the week-long conference. This atmosphere spilled over into overt hatred of Jews. One account by Ronald Eissens and published by ICARE, an anti-racist European NGO of a parallel NGO conference at a huge cricket ground gives a flavour of what it was like:

Jews were actively discriminated [against], shouted down, meetings on Anti-Semitism were hijacked by Palestinian Caucus members and supporters and people who protested against all this were branded ‘Zionist pig lovers’ and Jew lovers.

On the big September 1st demonstration, the most dominant slogan (of many) was Free Palestine. Pamphlets were handed out with a portrait of Hitler displaying the text:

What if I had won? The good things: There would be No Israel and No Palestinian’s blood shed – and the rest is your guess. The bad things: I wouldn’t have allowed the making of the new beetle – and the rest is your guess (Hirsh: pp.141-42).

Following these tempestuous (and for many Jewish delegates traumatic) events, occurring as they did against the background of the breakdown of the Israel/Palestine peace process and the later attacks by Islamist fanatics on the USA on 11th September 2001 and creating in the words of Eissen ‘a dark cloud of hate descending upon this world’; attempts were made to raise the issue of anti-Semitism within the European Union. After meetings between the EUMC director Beate Winkler and European Jewish Congress (EJC) officials a report on anti-Semitism in each EU member state was commissioned with a composite analysis of the reports to be published by the Centre for Anti-Semitic Research at Berlin’s Technical University. This report in 2003, however, was unfavourably received by the EUMC Monitoring Board for attributing much of the blame in the rise in anti-Semitism to Muslim communities. A second report in 2004 laid the blame for the majority of anti-Semitic activity on the far right.

More significantly though, the EUMC had noted in its 2004 report on anti-Semitism ‘the lack of a common definition’ and requested one from a small group of NGOs. What was to become the Working Definition which later morphed into the IHRA definition was disseminated in March 2004 and was intended to serve as a template for police services and antiracist campaigners, for use on the streets rather than incorporation into national legislation. However. it was expected to seep into universal usage by the relevant parties and this is what eventually happened with the All-Party Parliamentary Body into Anti-Semitism in the UK recommending its adoption in 2005 as did a number of similar initiatives around the world. It was in its ultimate form, the IHRA definition, adopted by the UK government in December 2016.

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is the outcome of lobbying by Jewish antiracist organisations in Europe in response to the rising levels of anti-Semitism in Europe and the new forms in which it is manifests itself; Islamist Jew hatred and far left opposition to the State of Israel as well as the traditional (and still active) far right Judeophobia. It needs to be pointed out that small but vociferous antizionist Jewish groups such as Corbyn supporting Jewish Voice for Labour oppose the IHRA definition. It is alleged that Jeremy Corbyn took so long to finally endorse IHRA because he feared he would fall foul of it. Opponents of IHRA assert that it has led to a chilling effect on pro-Palestinian advocacy and campaigning with campus events such as Israeli Apartheid Week being subjected to restrictions and community events in support of Palestinians being prohibited such as the London Borough of Tower Hamlet’s cancellation of a recent pro-Palestinian bicycle ride because of (alleged) fears that it would fall foul of IHRA.

Supporters of IHRA argue that it does not forbid any criticism of any aspect of any Israeli policy. It is opposition to the existence of the State of Israel and the demonisation of Israel as some sort of unique evil in the world based on a reading of Zionism as a fundamentally racist, supremacist, settler-colonial ideology that IHRA advocates see as anti-Semitic. They point to the use of ancient, conspiratorial anti-Jewish tropes and stereotypes by opponents of Israel’s existence such as “Zionist” control of global financial, media and political systems through the Rothschild dynasty and the invocation of the ‘blood libel’ when accusing Israel of the killing of Palestinian children as evidence of this modern anti-Semitism.

Demanding that Israel not be subjected to demands for behavioural standards not required or expected of other democratic nations is arguably vague. This may refer to the relatively less vitriol that the USA, UK and other partners of the “coalition of the willing” have received for dubious practices in the War on Terror and Iraq and Afghanistan wars than Israel attracts whenever conflict breaks out in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The “double standards” criterion may have more validity when one considers the records of some of Israel’s most strident critics in relation to other conflicts and sites of human rights violations in the world. There is the reluctance of Jeremy Corbyn to utter the words in relation to Syria “I condemn the actions of President Assad and his ally, President Putin” and of President Maduro of Venezuela; George Galloway’s saluting of the “courage and indefatigability” of Saddam Hussein; Noam Chomsky’s defence of Diane Johnstone’s denial of the Srebrenica massacre and, earlier, of the Khmer Rouge; John Pilger’s defence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of the “anti-fascist” Putin and of Slobodan Milosevic and suspended Labour MP Chris Williamson summoning up of the academic network headed up by the Bristol University political sociologist David Miller (none of whom have any specialism in the area) dedicated to the denial of Assad’s chemical weapons atrocities to fight for his reinstatement. Williamson has form in relation to Syria through his gushing admiration for the fake journalistic work of the Assad devotee Vanessa Beeley which includes the slandering of the Syrian volunteer civil defence force the White Helmets as NATO backed Islamist terrorist. The positions of anti-Israel activists and propagandists on other conflicts looks like a good subject for further empirical and scholastic research but there are enough anecdotes such as the double and treble standards cited above as well as the silences from those cut from similar political cloth on other occupations such as Tibet by China, Western Sahara by Morocco and West Irian by Indonesia.

Denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the form of a nation state would not be seen as a priori anti-Semitic if those doing the denying were consistent across the board and opposed, on principle, all nationalist movements, all separatist tendencies and ethnostates. In which case Kurds, Catalans, Scots, Baluchis, Basques or any ethnic or national minority one can think of would not be allowed to assert this right.

Regarding perhaps the most inflammatory aspect of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel discourse and practice, comparisons between Israeli behaviour and that of the Nazis; a simple bland statement that Israel kills civilians just like the Nazis would not count as an anti-Semitic statement. But the trouble begins when anti-Israel protagonists appropriate the images and narratives of the Shoah/Holocaust as part of their linguistic armoury. Displaying images of the swastika superimposed on the Star of David, of Israeli leaders depicted as wearing Hitler type moustaches and the falsification of history in order to prove Zionist collaboration with the Nazi implementation of the Shoah or that Hitler supported Zionism do incite hatred and ultimately have anti-Semitic consequences. It is no coincidence, in my view, that KGB and Communist Party functionaries who prosecuted the Soviet anti-Zionist campaign with such vigour in the 1960s, 70s and 80s later became involved in far-right anti-Semitic groups like Pamiyat in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.

Perhaps the IHRA definition is too blunt an instrument for dealing with anti-Semitism in the same way that Prevent is a well-meaning but blunt instrument for dealing with extremist and the threat of terrorism (white far right as well as Islamist far right); perhaps modern anti-Semitism is better dealt with existing hate-crime and public order legislation. Subjecting false Zionist-Nazi analogies to the rigours of scholastic inquiry may well be a better method of refuting such calumnies. It is worth pointing out that academic debate and inquiry around the creation of the State of Israel is excluded from the purview of the IHRA and that the IHRA definition has individual institutional not statutory remit. But IHRA is, in my view, a legitimate response to the increasing levels of mutating, shape-shifting as well as “traditional” anti-Semitism (other forms of hate crime are equally deserving of such a response) which events in the Labour Party in the last three years have exemplified. It does not have to be a means of restricting freedom of speech or journalistic or academic inquiry.

References:

David Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisemitism London: Routledge 2018.

[1] Two-thirds of these 892 incidents took place in the UK cities with the largest Jewish populations; Greater London and Greater Manchester. Over a third involved social media and among the them included physical assault, the painting of anti-Semitic graffiti on the homes of Holocaust survivors and the portrayal of Gaza as a Nazi style concentration camp. The CST do say that is not clear whether the total increase is due to better reporting or an actual quantitative increase in anti-Semitic abuse; probably a combination of both. (Daily Mirror, 1 August 2019)

⏩ Barry Gilheany has joined the Jewish Labour Movement as an affiliate member and encourages fellow labour movement colleagues concerned about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem to do the same.

56 comments:

Cry's of antisemitism have the same credibility as cries of islamaphobia -both are intended to silence valid criticism of the horrendous abuses related to both religions.

Religions have been given too much power and protection -we have seen that religious zealots throughout history are the most vicious and evil creatures to walk this planet -yet they are treated like delicate wallflowers that cannot handle any criticism or being challenged. I think Article 9 of the Eurpoean Convention on Human Rights should be scrapped -freedom of thought and conscience is enough -shielding religions was a step too far.

By embedding anything remotely anti-Israel as being somehow 'anti-semetic' they are laying the groundwork for Israel to become a Middle East North Korea, totalitarianism is never far behind censorship.

"Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist or settler-colonial enterprise." No religion has the right to self-determination. In international law you can't allow just some people in a country to have a vote on self determination. It has to be all the people. Do you agree?

Another point I'd like you to answer Barry, are the settlement programmes in the Occupied Territories which violate imternational law a "settler-colonial enterprise"?

I have a great love for the Palestinians who, by all accounts are being killed and injured by gunfire almost daily. I watched the film Gaza a couple of weeks ago and was struck by what a couple of the Palestinians said "We hate the whole world, except the Palestinians". Watch the film and you'll understand. Two milion people in a parcel of land 27 miles long and 7 miles wide who are being driven into the sea as they live on an ever-decreasing plot of land. Well, not too far into the sea as their limit is 3 miles, fishing for tiddlers in the shallows. Two million people. Their suffering breaks my heart as I can't or won't sacrifice enough to make a diffrence. No wonder they hate me.

Having read this well presented post I am even more of the view that the IHRA is a con job, a form of soft power whose primary goal is to limit criticism of an evil regime. If it is uniquely evil it lies in the origins of the state which emerged from a unique evil inflicted on Jews. It seems to me that Israel is a Kapo state rather than a Jewish state.

This would constitute an unjust reliance on Article 9. It caused The humanists concern. It had no need to mention religion above comedy or being blasphemous, or supporting a particular football team. Inserting the term gave it an exalted status which it should never have had.

AM, I am afraid I will have to disagree on your example. It appears the court found she did not intend to contribute to debate and went beyond offending, shocking and disturbing and intended to provoke and mock.

Simon - I think this is the problem with the court, that it could reach such a decision. Mocking religion is fine, much like mocking football clubs: no mention in Article 9 of protection for soccer opinion. As for provocation - any offence provokes and there should be no right or opinion not to be offended. It would be an appalling state of affairs were we to live under a regime where mockery were prohibited. The staff of Charlie Hebdo would have been jailed.

The IHRA is not about protecting religion since Jews constitute a race unlike Islam and Catholicism. It does not preclude criticism of any aspect of Israeli government policy; it does not prevent condemnation of the Occupation of the West Bank as a settler-colonial enterprise, Simon, conduct of military operations in Gaza, Nation-State Law etc. All of which I made perfectly clear in my article.

If the IHRA does seek to defend any boby of ideas and ideology then arguably that body is Zionism which is a mostly secular form of nationaliosm. It is the demonisation of the State of Israel, Ziomism and the distortion of history that the Ken Livingstones of this world engage in to pursue such agendas that the IHRA seeks to address.

So just to repeat, the IHRA does not seek to prevent criticism of Israel not least because it has no statutory remit. It is the use of traditional antismemitic tropes to demonise the State of Israel (particularly in Soviet antizionist discourse which I will cover in a later article and in Islamist antizionist discourse) that it seeks to confront.

Antisemitism, like anti-Muslim hatred, hostility to immigration and racism in general is on the rise throughout Europe. Perhaps general hate crime and public order legislation is sufficient to deal with it. But to tackle hate crime of any manifestation an appreciation of the specificity of a particular hate crime. That is my understanding of IHRA.

Barry, what race? And why should Jews have any more claim to being a race than Christians or Muslims? A white person or a black person cannot change their race in the way that Jewish person can change their religion?

The IHRA is in my view a propagandist scam, used to mask the colonial origins of Zionism which differs little from the German and Nazi concept of Lebensraum. European settlers came in and stole the land of other people and then behaved brutally to keep it. People are as free to reject Zionism as they are to reject Nazism and should not acquiesce in the IHRA attempt to protect Zionism.

The IHRA does noting whatsoever to protect Palestinians from Israeli hate crime and should be treated much the same as bodies that wish to protect blasphemy laws.

This head Hirsch you love to quote, on a blog called Free speech for Israel (Jews & friends who say antizionism is NOT antisemitism), Deborah Maccoby deconstructs Hirsch's “Review of Contemporary Left Antisemitism, David Hirsh, Routledge 2017”...Deborah writes like you..only she gives a more balanced view of things. Where you forget to mention he was paid £25,000 to research one chapter.

And in the Acknowledgements, Hirsh mentions that he has drawn on an earlier work by himself“which was supported by a Rothschilds Foundation Europe and Ford Foundation research grant (£25,000) ‘to investigate the character and dynamics of anti-Zionism as a contemporary political movement and its relationship to antisemitism’, January 2007 to August 2007.

Debbie goes to say..

Hirsch qualifies his attacks on “the community of the good” by conceding that their antisemitism is either unconscious or unintentional and non-subjective – what he calls “objective anti-Semitism” (a puzzling term, because how can any action or behavior be divorced from motivation and intention, conscious or unconscious?)

Honestly Barry, you should open the link. She writes in your kind of way..University talk. And after you have read her piece, have a glance at the right hand side and you will see an an article by Chris Knight and it about how the IHRA definition attempts to stop us learning from history....First paragraph read like this..

Editorial note: It is important to recognise that comparisons with Nazis need to be carefully considered and not used as a default term of abuse. It is also important to note that analogies are best drawn with pre-1939 Nazi oppression of Jews (and of course many others); not with the industrialized mass killings of the war time period with which there is no comparison.]

And the complete piece is mostly by eight holocaust-survivors and why the don't see any difference between what the Nazi's put them through , to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians today. And they make exactly the same point's Anthony has made to you more than but you either refuse to accept or wont..

Check the links out Barry..This head Hirsch isn't what you make him out to be...

Barry, it doesn't matter if being Jewish is a race or a religion because you cannot exclude others in a territory from voting on national self-determination. Jewish, Muslim, Christian or athiest. They all have a vote according to international law. Do you think other inhabitants of Israel shouldn't get a vote?

The guidance prevents people denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist or settler-colonial enterprise.

Of course Israel has a right to exist but even the United Nations say it can't exist in its current form. I.e. With illegal settlements and occupied territory. Do you think these latter aspects of Israel are a settler-colonial enterprise?

This is my second attempt at trying to get an answer to these simple questions.

AM, the court ruled you are allowed to offend, shock and disturb but drew the line at her intention to provoke and mock. The court wasn't drawing the line at being thought-provoking. It was another type of provocation. It found she made no attemot at initiating debate. Her fine of 480 euros was found to be proportionate. I agree. There is no absolute right to free speech in amy country. It comes with a responsibility and caveats. The ruling was mostly based on article 10 rather than article 9 and ruled that her free speech went beyond offense. If someone used their free speech as incitement to football violence I doubt they could use article 10 as a crutch, whether or not love of football was included in art. 9.

Simon, the court ruled that what was arguably a statement of fact was offensive to a particular religion. She is quite entitled to mock. Mockery is central to satire. She does not have to initiate debate for her mockery to be protected. She was not inciting violence but expressing her view that a man who has sex with a 9 year old is a paedophile. It seems an eminently reasonable view and the objection to it was on religious grounds. Those grounds should have had no standing. If she was to say that a football coach who had sex with a nine year old youth player was a paedophile, she would not have been prosecuted. There are always limits to free speech but religious opinion should never be a limit on the free speech of any one. The ruling was imposing limits on the expression of a widely held opinion.

"Jews are an erhnoreliogious group and a nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israal and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated"

"Jews originated aS an erhnic and religious group in the Middle East during the second m illenium BCEW in the part of the Lev ant known as the Land of Israel.

This a statement of anthropoligicaL fact abd of Jewish connection to what was Palestine of the Otoman Empire and later British Mandate. It is not a defence of Israeli actions now or in the past.

I have to disgree with your version of the creation of the State of Israel. Exactly what colonial power were those who were fleeing the pograms in the 19th century and thde persdecution of Jews in Europe in the 1930s and 40s culminating in the Shoah/Holocaust acting on behalf when they allegedly on Lebansraum. Was it not then the colonial power, Britain who restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine through the White Paper of 1939 just as the Holocaust was on the horizon? Did Jewish migrants not imitially buy land from local Arabs. There is nothing in the Zionist project to compare with the enslavement, genocides and forced conversion of native peoples in the Americas by Spain in the 15th century, Belgium in the Conmgo in the 19th century and of the Native Americans by white US pioneers etc, etc, etc. I am not acting as an apologist for everything Israel does, far from it buy I believe in challenging one-sided narratives (no matter from who it comes) on dividced societies particulalry when they falsify history in pursuit of their agendas.

Sand's explanation of the birth of the "myth" of a Jewish people as a group with a common, ethnic origin has been summarized as follows: "[a]t a certain stage in the 19th century intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace."[18] In this, Sand writes, they were similar to other nationalist movements in Europe at the time that sought the reassurance of a Golden Age in their past to prove they have existed as a separate people since the beginnings of history. Jewish people found theirs in what he calls "the mythical Kingdom of David". Before this invention, he says, Jews thought of themselves as Jews because they shared a common religion, not a common ethnic background.

Wikipedia can often like psychiatrists in a US murder trial - they can be for and against. The Zionist movement was the colonising power - it had long been looking out for a land to steal and were not always focused on stealing it from the Palestinians. There is plenty of actions carried out by the Zionists in 1948 which make it very like the other entities you mentioned: massacre, rape, pillage, land theft. You are wholly entitled to disagree with my view of Israel's origins but should those who disagree with your view of it be afforded the same right or should they be labelled by the IHRA scam as anti-Semitic rather than anti-Zionist?

And why should the current Lebansraum policy of Israel not be regarded as comparable to the Nazis?

I am fully aware of the work of Free Speech on Israel and its spawn Jewish Voice for Labour and will write a piece on them and the Jewish antizionist tradition from which they come. Even John Lansdman, head honcho of Momentum has serious issues with them.

So what if David Hirsh was paid 25K to write a chapter. That's how academia works. I only wish I had received a few notes for my PhD research. David Hirsh and Dave Rich and Dave Collier and others are doling a good job in exposing the rotten under belly of far-left antisemitism and how it is poisoning the soul of the Labour Party

Also don't patronise me when you say "She writes in your way .. University talk".

A Jew is "a member of the people whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins to the ancient Hebrew people of Israel".

One of the markers of ethnicity is language. Jews traditionally spoke two languages: Yiddish (hence the Spurs terms of affection or not "Yids" or "Yiddoes") which largely perished in the ovens and Hebrew.

A Jew is "a member of the people whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins to the ancient Hebrew people of Israel".

One of the markers of ethnicity is language. Jews traditionally spoke two languages: Yiddish (hence the Spurs terms of affection or not "Yids" or "Yiddoes") which largely perished in the ovens and Hebrew."

That still doesn't make them a race. The DNA of the Jews who were always there and the Palestinians show at a very early stage there were interbreeding between them. As I have said, modern day Israel have thrown lots of money at DNA research to attempt to locate a marker that would set them apart, I know as I've read the papers.

Judaism is a religion, jews are the adherents to that religion nothing more. To imply that they are flies against science, physical evidence and reasoned logic and quite frankly I'm surprised you go along with it.

AM, I read the link you sent me and not the full judgement. I understand that she took it to court to defend her right of free speech under article 10. They said she has the right to offend but not the right to provoke. Your definition of provoke seems to be closer to provocation of thought whereas the court seems to take it as something else entirely- closer to jeopardising peace. Again, the court ruled people have the right to offend.

Provocation of thought is a lesser hurdle than offense. She went beyond provocation of thought, beyond mere offense. Her intention was very much under scrutiny and was one of the points where her argument in court failed.

The court ruled her actions jeopardised religious peace ie. Peace and tolerance between religious denominations. Surely this is somethimg we can get behind whatever our belief system?

Simon - it is a while since I read the judgement. Daithi D raised the case here some time back. But it was an Article 9 issue in public discourse if memory is not wrong.

The court ruled that her very authentic view that an adult male engaging in sexual relations with a nine year old girl is a paedophile. Had she have made the comment about Barry Bennell she would never have been before the court. Prioritising religious sentiment is the problem here, not the woman who made the comment. She and her party pose a serious problem, for which we can abhor them, but this isn't it.

I will flip your question and suggest that surely the notion of an adult having sex with a nine year old is paedophilia and is something we can all get behind whatever our belief system? And we should also all get behind our right to say it.

What threatened peace was not her widely held view of what constitutes a paedophile but those so intolerant of another view that they would threaten and/or follow through on the threat to suppress opinion they do not like. Much like it was with the anti-theocratic Danish cartoons. They were quite prepared to protect the reputation of an adult male from an authentic call out.

The current questions raised about Price Andrew could be ruled out of order on the same basis that they pose a threat to Royal peace. Why should we abide by such nonsense?

Her right to an opinion should be as robustly defended as the right to an opinion that those Rabbis who circumcise with their teeth are engaging in paedophilia masquerading as religion. I want to live in a thoroughly secular society where absolutely no privilege is given to religious sentiment, where one abuser of a nine year old is treated the same as another abuser of a nine year old.

The ruling set a dangerous precedent even for a court as innately conservative as this one.

She did not advocate violence. She spoke a truth to religious power and religious power did not like it.

Yes, the settlements on the West Bank can bde seen as settler-colonial enterprixses. I have said over and over again that I oppose the settlements as violations of international law.

Every citizen of Israel has a vote (including its 20% Arab minority) unlike apartheid-era South Africa which many anti-Israelis are fond of citing as a comparator. Where have I ever suggested that non-Jews shoiuld not have the franchise?

AM, I know you're very keen on a wider freedom of speech than I. That's something I admire about you. Saying that, I think you're such a keen advocate and I am so persuaded by the judgement, albeit a summary, that we'll never meet in the middle. Of course, there are parts of it I disagree with.

However, the parts that struck me most were her intention- why she said it; the court said she has every right to offend; however, she was jeopardising religious peace and a few other things. Her fine of 480 euros may not be huge and perhaps points to.the lack of severity in the original judgement of the lower court. I know how keen you are on this issue and reluctantly admit in the other case I was against the cartoons due to the fact they seemed to intentionally inflame the situation, knowing full well there'd be violence. Why set out to deliberately annoy people? We understand they hold fervent beliefs, like mamy religions, and there are extremists amongst them. It only takes one extremist to make the headlines. Any way, I will read your reply but I will bow out at this stage. I don't want to sound like a broken record.

Barry, it said above"denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" is a no-no. You can't have self determination in international law and only allow a Jewish input.

Your point about the settlements being seen as a settler-colonial enterprise may mean you, yourself, break the rule I quoted. If you, so much in favour, cannot abide by the rules, who can? Anyway, as I said to AM I am bowimg out. Nothimg like religious debate to get stuck in treacle.

it is not so much that I am in favour of freedom of speech as I am in favour of freedom of inquiry and the role speech plays in ensuring that freedom. Free speech allows me to call a guy a nigger - which is out. Free inquiry allows me to argue that black people are different, lesser, better, whatever - which is in. And it allows people to ridicule and mock me for any deranged ideas I might have about the superiority of the white Irish.

Again, she was not jeopardising religious peace. The people who use violence against opinion were doing that, not her. What you do not address is that her statement of fact that a adult men having sex with a nine year old is guilty of paedophilia should not be prohibited by religious opinion. The

… prohibition is the threat not the opinion. The cartoons were an exercise in free inquiry aimed at exploring why people were fearful of drawing Mo. Your position here is giving a veto to those who threaten violence.

I had never heard of Hirsch before you mentioned him on TPQ. Today I know about Deborah Maccoby's review of “ Contemporary Left Antisemitism, David Hirsh, Routledge 2017” on a blog called 'Free Speech for Israel” and she covered exactly the same topics there as you are here., both cite Hirsch in your arguments, For example I have a better understanding what the The Livingstone Formulation is about, and how and why anti-Corbynites want to keep him out of n*10.... And today because of the piece by Deborah Maccohy I also know this about Hirsch...

In the penultimate semi-autobiographical chapter, Hirsh writes of himself: “I am a middle-class Jewish boy. I was brought up in a nice big comfortable house in North London and I was sent to an expensive public school”

So a well paid Jew in North London was paid by £25,000 by Rothschilds Foundation Europe and Ford Foundation in the form of a research grant to help him write a book's saying “anyone who says Zionism and Nazism are simply different cheeks of the same arse is a racist,” and get s accused of xenophobia “ And Hirsch get's your vote Barry...We know that.

I am fully aware of the work of Free Speech on Israel and its spawn

On the 'Free Speech for Israel' blog, there is a piece by Chris Knight, who provided part of the testimonies of eight holocaust survivors,.here are two examples..

“I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of ‘blood and soil’ in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria...(Hajo Meyer was a survivor of Auschwitz.)

Dr. Israel Shahak, Middle East Policy Journal, Summer 1989, no.29.

I would like to see Israel, by renouncing the desire for domination, including domination of the Palestinians, become a much nicer place for Israelis to live.” (Israel Shahak was a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.)

Barry, why should I believe a well paid Jew in North London, the IHRA or yourself when you all say there is no compassion between Nazism, Zionism, the concentration camps, Gaza..When I have shown you two of eight examples of survivors of the holocaust saying there is no difference between Nazism to the treatment Israel is handing out to Palestinians?

The charge Mike levelled at you on his piece , when he said you omit things and distort facts..It is true. As I said I had no idea who Hirsch was, let alone Deborah Maccoby and as I said earlier, you both cover exactly the same subjects, book sources etc..but she puts more flesh on the bone about what motivates him, his political allies, their agenda...

David Hirsh's academic competence rests on the qualility of his work (as it should with any other scholar) not on his ethnicity or family background.

As regards omission of things and distortion of facts, the expression "stones and glasshouses" come into my mind when you make such accusations against my writings.

And there is no contradiction in rerognising Israel' s right to exist and condemnming the right-wing nationalist ideology of the settlers. All forms of nationalism carry within them the possibility of xenophobnia and extremism; just look across contemporary Europe (I do recall you saying that Marine Le Pen would get your vote).

I actually endorse what Drs Meyer and Shahak say but there are also Holocaust survivors; but that does not amount to an equivalecne between the totality of Zionism and Nazism and racism. To make such an equivalence does not stand up to sociological and anthropoligical examination. Besides exploiting the memories of Holocaust survivors in the manner that Free Speech on Israel and Jewish Voice for Labour do to suit their agenda is distasteful; the hard left (as well as the far right) are past masters at manipulation of the truth.

You will have to do better than making ad hominem attacks on scholars and quoting from a small sect that being a part of the Corbyn cult have their own agenda including the expulsion of the JLM from the Labour Party

The person who brought Hirsch's social class, ethnicity and all the rest into the equation was Hirsch..He mentioned in it his book..Means it is on the table and up for debate...As for his or anyone's 'academic competence', I will make my own mind up on that topic..I wont take someone's word, I will research who ever s and call things as I find them.. At the minute (his words), He is a middle class Jew who lives/lived in North London and has no problems in taking $25,000 from a family that don't care about anyone but themselves and their parasitic friends..

As regards omission of things and distortion of facts, the expression "stones and glasshouses" come into my mind when you make such accusations against my writings.

If you Barry or anyone finds any distortion of facts etc in any article or comment I have made, flag the piece/comment to me..If I am wrong, I have no qualms in holding my hands up and saying “I called it wrong”..

All forms of nationalism carry within them the possibility of xenophobnia and extremism; just look across contemporary Europe (I do recall you saying that Marine Le Pen would get your vote).

Why just Europe..All over this rock people are protesting, in Honk Kong they are the good guy's taking to the streets, in the middle east they are also good guys, in South America same deal..On the streets of Paris (or any other city in Europe you care to mention) they are labeled racist thugs..Why is that Barry...Staying on France..I will say it again between Le Pen and Macron..Le Pen gets my vote everytime...The guy is a muppet...I said it lots of times before..Maybe when he was sexually abused as a school boy it fcuked up his thought process..

Straight Q...Barry you have at least two passport's from different countries in your back pocket and also claim to be European..Where is your Loyalty..Is it to the Irish, British or Europeans...? You had to give one nationality your vote, which one of your holy trinity gets the thumbs up...?

I actually endorse what Drs Meyer and Shahak

Does that include the part were they said “Nazism and Zionism are simply different cheeks of the same arse?”..If you endorse their words and agree with them, why do argue so much when anyone else draws the same comparisons?

You will have to do better than making ad hominem attacks on scholars and quoting from a small sect that being a part of the Corbyn cult have their own agenda including the expulsion of the JLM from the Labour Party

Barry I quoted from Hirsch, his book, his writings and few holocaust survivors...Let's keep it real. You talk loads about democracy and when the electorate in the US gave the Donald the thumbs up you cried foul and wanted him impeached for something Judicial Watch and others said was a none story, because the real story is your poster girl, Uranium one, Bengazi, Laura Silsby and a host of other crimes she committed but has yet to charged over..

If the JLM think they don't need Corbyn..then why don''t they simply breakaway and set up their own political party, and the next time there is an election (should be soon).. and let the people decide...I don't think they will get a very big mandate...

Oh where to begin. Your tall tale about Bill Gates and the population reduction vaccine; your promotion of 9/11 conspitacy theories, the Morganthau plan to destroy post-war Germany. Your almost demented obsession with the Rothschilds; a hallmark of antisemitic racists all over. Etc, Etc, Etc.

Drs Meyer and Shahak did not say "Nazism and Zionism are simply different cheeks of the sazme arse"; it was your good self. It is the Kahanist movement and other settler movements that resemble Nazism and racism not the entirety of Zionism. In fact there is no contradiction between supporting Zionism and oppposing the occupation of thde West Bank and Israeli human rights abuses.

It may be hard to get your head round this but like John Hewitt I have multiple identities: Ulster, Irish, British and European as well as my football allegiance, Leeds United, which is my primary affiliation. God Save the Queen and the Soldier's Song will never be my "national" anthem; Marching on Together, my club's song, is. My ethnicity of origin does not define my politics, my humamism does. I gvuess I have failed your cricket test and hurrah if I have because one of the reasons I left NI was to get away from the verbal bullying that you and far too many Northern Irish people engage in

You raised the issue of David Hirsh's Jewishness in an ill-disguised attempt to discredit his work simply on that basis. You cannot try to distance yourself from that.

The JLM did narrowly vote to stay in the Labour Party at its AGM to fight the good fight against the racist poison that has innfected the Party.

So the finding that Trump may have obstructed justice is a non-story. I don't think.

You should not accuse anyone of murder unless you have the forensic evidence; otherwise you are open to accuxations of slander.

You are entitled to disagree with my views on the events of 1948 and I would never seek to censor them. Besides the IHRA definition specifi cally excludes academic discussion on the events surrounding the creation of the State of Israel; it also has no statutory effect.

Since the NEC of the Labour Party has voted to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism then I, as a Labour member, believe that party members and reps should be bound by it. I do not seek to impose it on anybody outside the Labour Party.

All wars are horrible and no hands are ever clean in war. Arab forces committed atrocities as well such as the attack on the medical convoy near Jerusalem which killed 79 medics after the Deir Yassim massacre carried out by irregulars from the Beitar youth movement. For a dispassionate account of the events of 1948, I would recommend Ben ny Morris' "1948. The First Arab-Israeli War". But I am not insisting that people read it.

If there was a Lebransraum process in Israel/Palestine, then in my view it happened by default particularly after the start of the West Bank occupation. By contrast it was a centrally planned process from the start in Nazi Germany as was in the case of the ethnic cleansing by Serb nationalists in the former Yugosalvia. But that is only my opinion and you are entitled to disagree with it.

However I stick to my view that it is impossible to understand the events of 1948-49 without taking into account the transforamtive effect on Jews of the Shoah/Holocaust which in my view demonstrated to a criti al mass of Jewry the need for a Jewish homeland due to the failure of the world to prevent their near extinction.

I must alslo have to say is that there has to be robust legislation to deal with the rise in not just antisemitism but anti-Muslim hatred and other manifestations of extremism across Europe; legialtion which does not hinder inquiry into and critique of religions like Islam and ideologies like Zionism.

I also cannot help but notice that some of the vile abuse which Laura Weinberg has been receiving online is Israel related.

Barry - and for those Labour Party members who do want the right to dissent? Is there no room for pluralism of ideas within the BLP? Lebensraum started with the seizure of Palestinian lands and has continued to this day. It is centrally planned today and the Israeli government is prepared to murder in the seized territories to defend the plan. The comparisons with the Nazis are stark. The Holocaust did feed into the perceived need for many Jews to have a safe place but the land theft was planned long before the Holocaust. Nothing that happened during the Holocaust justifies the Crime of forming the state of Israel on Palestinian lands. Had they stole German land or being given it as reparations, then it would have been a poetic justice.

Robust legislation to deal with hate crime certainly, but not a legislation that prioritises religious opinion. A belief is god should no more be protected than a belief in Leeds United.

Morris exposed the Israeli military rapes and murders of Arab women and was shunned by university colleagues for having done so.

Barry I cannot see it as race hatred when the Jews are not a race any more than the Muslims or the Catholics. The idea that the Jews can even be categorised as an ethnic group is very contestable when we wonder what has a cosmopolitan Brooklyn Jew got with some Sephardi farmer from Spain. Many in the BLP have deep antipathy towards Israel not Jews. There are Jews also who are hostile to Israel because they feel it has disgraced Jewish people with its barbarism.

Good afternoon/evening...You are a bit of prick..either that or you are closet vegan..Deffo one of the two.

Drs Meyer and Shahak did not say "Nazism and Zionism are simply different cheeks of the sazme arse";

They did Barry..go back to were I linked Chris Knight and read not only what Meyer or Shahak said..Check out what Dr. Marika Sherwood who is a survivor of a Budapest ghetto said...

.I have to say to the Israeli government, which claims to speak in the name of all Jews, that it is not speaking in my name. I will not remain silent in the face of the attempted annihilation of the Palestinians; the sale of arms to repressive regimes around the world; the attempt to stifle criticism of Israel in the media worldwide; or the twisting of the knife labelled ‘guilt’ in order to gain economic concessions from Western countries. Of course, Israel’s geo-political position has a greater bearing on this, at the moment. I will not allow the confounding of the terms ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘anti-Zionist’ to go unchallenged.”...

Why should I believe you (who walked some of the same streets as myself), a middle class Jew from North London or a quango called the IHRA....And not people, who not only experienced the horrors of Nazism during WW2 but also see the same human rights abuses carried out by the modern state of Israel towards Palestinians..? In street terms (not University talk), Nazism and Zionism are different cheeks of the same arse....

To make such an equivalence does not stand up to sociological and anthropoligical examination.

Barry do you not think any of the people I have mentioned, while obtaining their doctorates didn't examine or factor into their equations all the 'sociological and anthropological' arguments' on the question of how Israel is handling the Palestinian question that the Rothschild's and others who on paper created the modern state of Israel in 1917....My guess is they factored in lot's when coming to their own decisions that Zionism and Nazism are nothing other than different cheeks of the same arse...

. Besides exploiting the memories of Holocaust survivors in the manner that Free Speech on Israel and Jewish Voice for Labour do to suit their agenda is distasteful,

All Chris Knight has done is give examples (and sourced their arguments to be tested) of several survivors of Nazism.. Are they distasteful too? Do they write 'Goebbels type screed' when they compare Nazism to Zionism? We know think Daithi writes parrot screed... Your screed is just parrot, on the same piece you think anyone who critic's Laura writes racist screed (You have my full support in any actions you wish against the vile, racist screed)...But me, I get the title of writing ”Goebbels type screed”, while some may/could see it as slander on my name... all I can say is it went out my left ear as quick as it entered my right ear.. Between us Barry why is my 'screed' akin to Goebbels and no one else's? Keep the faith ,I wont sue you for deformation of character or anything else (anyone can sue me, head's up it will cost you more in legal fee's than you might get out of my pocket<--I live on my overdraft)...

You should not accuse anyone of murder unless you have the forensic evidence; otherwise you are open to accuxations of slander.

Who have I slandered Barry..Your poster girl or the muppet Mueller who in part gave Epstein a sweet heart deal because he was working for them..Your poster girl isn't getting great reviews from Judicial watch..You have to check out what they have uncovered..

The JLM did narrowly vote to stay in the Labour Party at its AGM to fight the good fight against the racist poison that has innfected the Party.

They voted against going alone because like you they wont get many, if anyone elected..We both know you have put your name forward to get elected on councils..What happened Barry, why didn't your screed pass any litmus test never mind cricket ones..

Only I am going to get very drunk today listening to Rockabilly music with friends who I have known for over 35 yrs, I would have loads more to say why your thought process is wrong on every level...

I have two comments to make, neither strictly speaking referring to or confined to this piece by Barry. I have noticed personal attacks on Barry, some more virulent on other posts. It takes away from the attacker's arguments and gives Barry the moral high ground.

The second comment is from a position of someone who has still been frequenting the Quill, albeit less often than before. I have been reading more frequently these days and the rise of the right in Irish nationalism and dare I say it in case in makes it more real than it is, in Irish Republicanism is becoming more evident on this website. I am not calling for it to be silenced, just fearful of a rise akin to the Blueshirts. In a recession people generally move to either the left or to the right and in this recession it's a lurch to the right.

There is little history of dissent in modern Ireland except for Republicanism which is why I guess some on the right are pinning their allegiance to Republicanism. Anyway, on-wards to a socialist 32 County Republic. The right always have been and always will be on the wrong side of history.

Simon - where you feel the attacks are personal then let us know. Perhaps we are too used to the rough and tumble to notice or pay particular attention to it when we do because we see it as coming with the turf on these type of blogs. If a complaint is made we ask three people to look at it of whom I will not be one. Barry is a valued contributor and his person (but not his ideas nor anyone else's) should be protected. I will keep looking at comments coming in but up until now, while they have been snarky they have not reached the point where we think they pure abuse.

AM, thanks. Will do. Maybe I have been away from the comments section too long. You're probably right that they haven't reached the point where they're virulent enough to warrant a complaint. I remember a certain other, even more regular, contributor getting a lot of stick which I felt was unwarranted and he left the blog at that time. I guess there's the rough and tumble. When it comes from.all directions it can take its toll. I hope Barry doesn't feel so harried as to stop commenting.

Saying that, my observation on the more frequent vocalisation of the right still stands. I guess staying away from the commments section emphasised these observations. Not trying to censure. I feel patterns repeat themselves through history. The right will always be wrong. You often hear people boast that their ancestors fought in the Tan War but never that they were a Blueshirt. When we start hearing that boast we'll know we're in trouble.

Simon - without naming who you refer to it is difficult for us to get a handle on it. I don't recall anyone leaving over abuse. I do recall people being booted off for abuse. Indeed it might have happened but I do not recall.

I prefer the thinking right to the unthinking left. I dislike blind faith, period. In jail I made the point that we will measure the success of the education programme to the extent that recipients come out the other side thinking the opposite of what the programme wanted them to think; a preference for the thinking pluralist over the unthinking Marxist. Barry will be here to the end. If we feel there is a pattern of abuse we will step in.I have a problem with criticism of patters of thought being labelled fascist or racist when they might be anything but.

I can assure you all that I will remain on this site. I do not object to anyone questioning my writings and political and philosphical views expressed therein. My views are not set in stone nor should anyone else's be. What I do object to remarks directed at me concerning my university education and supposed national allegiance. I am not taking these issues any further; I hope this will always be the case but cannot guarantee it.

But I do strongly object to the demeaning, sexist and insulting comments made towards Laura Weinberg under her post on her experience of fascist intimidation on Twitter. By hiding behimd a moniker while spewing out his venom; this commenter acted as a typical keyboard bullly and coward. Play the ball, not the man/woman.

Barry - people directing remarks at your education or national allegiance undermine themselves not you.

I read the comments to Laura before posting them - they were snarky rather than abusive. Comments from behind a moniker carry little weight and my own conclusion was that the comments in this case did nothing to detract from the arguments she made. Nor were they the type of comments someone would need a moniker to hide behind. Laura did not complain. As you are aware, there is a rule of thumb for the blog that named writers of articles can ask for no monikers to be permissible in the comment section of the piece they write. People are free to have whatever view on Mandela they wish, much as you are free to have a view on Sands. That the view might rub us up the wrong way is no reason not to publish it. We can hardly have people allowed to call Netanyahu a gangster but not Mandela. Often the comment reveals more about and positions the commenter than person the comment is about.

Political correctness is a toxic polluting intellectual culture. It is not about manners but is a mechanism of intellectual control. I am much more concerned about political correctness than I am about people being snarky on the internet.

My views are not set in stone nor should anyone else's be. What I do object to remarks directed at me concerning my university education and supposed national allegiance.

One thing you didn't learn, take on board or other at Uni was how to think critically, you are subjective and not objective. Why do always regurgitate and repeat the lie that the modern state of Israel was set up because of a UN mandate etc, when history tells me a very different version of events...? Al Jazzera and France 24 both discussing 100yrs after Balfour and they both give my version of events Barry, not the myth you keeping repeating about Israel being set up in '48. What happened was in 1917 Zionist's moved non Semitic Jews affected by the Russian pogroms into Germany like pawns on a chess board. And it very similar to the script being played out today across the middle east...Create a lot of chaos and move populations across borders like pawns on a chess board. Who benefits Barry? The people being displaced or the people who funded the chaos...?

In 2002 Barry John Pilger wrote a piece that explains how 9/11 was set in place after the PNAC document and how the USA needed a new Pearl Harbour. It was signed off by Zionist glove puppets..

Another myth you like to go with is the non involvement of Israel in 9/11. You even refuse to accept that Israeli intell had knowledge of the event..(from The Corbert Report website and it is fully sourced, there is a complete transcript,)

Oded Ellner had $4,700 stuffed into his sock. They lied to the police about where they had been that morning. They were carrying plane tickets for immediate departure to different places around the globe. The FBI confirmed that two of the men had ties to Israeli intelligence and came to suspect that they had indeed been on a mission for the Mossad. And of course, after returning to Israel Ellner claimed on national Israeli TV that they had been sent there “to document the event

On the same website there is an excellent investigative look at 9/11 called 9/11 trillions (follow the money).

The question may seem simple, but how we answer it is of vital importance. It determines how we proceed with our investigation of that day. And once you strip away the emotional rhetoric and the fear-inducing imagery, we’re left with a simple truth: 9/11 was a crime. And as with any crime, there is one overriding imperative that detectives must follow to identify the perpetrators: Follow the money.

Follow the money Barry and look at not only how but why big oil companies conquered the world at the turn of the 20th Century. And the family names that keep coming up are the Morgans, Rockefellers, Warburgs, and Rothschilds and European Royalty. If you watch the two documentaries Barry the only conclusion you or any one will come away with is Zionist's, banking cartels and oligarchs conspired with each other and how they revised the whole education system to suit their agenda. Which today manifests itself in the generation Z brigade who go to uni and like yourself Barry are pre-programed to repeat things like computers and bots are pre-programmed to spout out the latest algorithm. What you will learn by watching is how very wrong you are when you repeat the pseudoscience nonsense that the IPCC report as fact ...You will discover that the IPPC Crimatologists are guilty of hiding data and didn't do any jail time due to a technicality. Dr Judith Curry, who once worked for/on some IPPC's reports, exposes their lies and double talk. Or how a a delinquent teenager was mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert..throw into the mix how like yourself Barry the IPPC are very subjective in their reporting 'fact'.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is supposed to be an objective scientific body, but Rajendra Pachauri, who chaired it for 13 years, was an environmental crusader. The IPCC is supposed to be policy neutral, but Pachauri was an aggressive policy advocate. Prior to his being elected IPCC chairman, an Indian High Court had already concluded that he’d “suppressed material facts” and “sworn to false affidavits.” .Contrary to longstanding claims, Pachauri earned only one PhD rather than two..

(part 3)In an earlier piece on TPQ called Climate Grief, Climate Anger, you said. How many more IPCC reports, documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth and destructive weather events does it take to convince the climate change septics otherwise. I am doing my bit by moving towards a meat and dairy free diet.

All I can say is your last sentence reads “I am a closet vegan”..The first half, if you understood who is behind the IPPC's pseudoscience, you would be very embarrassed to think that way, let alone publish it..(all my links and sources check out). The backers of the IPCC are the same oil companies who conquered the world at the start of the 20th Century. Today Barry, they fill your head (not mine) with pseudoscience bollicks that your repeat as fact about carbon foot prints and digital foot prints. My foot print is size 11. What they want is your data Barry because data is the new oil.. Let's go back again to the start of the 20th Century when the Morgans, Rockefellers, Warburgs, and Rothschilds went to Jekyll Island, Century of Enslavement (a history of the US Federal Reserve, Corbert Report)

The men had been told to arrive one by one after sunset to attract as little attention as possible. Indeed, secrecy was so important to their mission that the group did not use anything but their first names throughout the journey so as to keep their true identities secret even from their own servants and waiting staff. . We pick up the story, appropriately enough, under cover of darkness. It was the night of November 22, 1910, and a group of the richest and most powerful men in America were boarding a private rail car at an unassuming railroad station in Hoboken, New Jersey. The car, waiting with shades drawn to keep onlookers from seeing inside, belonged to Senator Nelson Aldrich, the father-in-law of billionaire heir to the Rockefeller dynasty, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. A central figure on the influential Senate Finance Committee, where he oversaw the nation’s monetary policy, Aldrich was referred to in the press as the “General Manager of the Nation.” Joining him that evening was his private secretary, Shelton, and a who’s who of the nation’s banking and financial elite: A. Piatt Andrew, the Assistant Treasury Secretary; Frank Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Davison, a senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company; Benjamin Strong, Jr., an associate of J.P. Morgan and President of Bankers Trust Co., and Paul Warburg, heir of the Warburg banking family and son-in-law of Solomon Loeb of the famed New York investment firm, Kuhn, Loeb & Company....(The American Mafia almost pulled of the same stunt in The Apalachin Meeting in 1957.) Now 13 years before Jekyll Island, James Connolly wrote about central banks, capitalism and the class system in socialism and nationalism, (was Connolly a conspiracy theorist too Barry or simply as I think, well ahead of the pack...?)

Another complete distortion and suppression of historical fact is the origin of WW1 that is still taught today in any (most) centers of education from secondary schools, higher education and even most uni's is it started somewhere between Kaiser Bill flexing his muscles over a family affair that cost some duke to lose his life in Serbia.. When the truth is in 1891 three Zionists conspired together, (Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Reginald baliol Brett) in London and drew up plans for WW1.. Or as Gerry Docherty discusses (Irish historian and scholar), Rhodes and his merry men thought..

So in the start it was influence—people who could influence politics, people who had the money to influence statesmen—and the dream. The dream of actually crushing Germany. This was a basic mindset of this group as it gathered together.

Peter Hof (author who wrote..the two Edwards, How King Edward VII and Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey Fomented the First World War said...

Yes, well from the British perspective, Germany, after their unification in 1871, they became very strong very quickly. And over time this worried the British more and more, and they began to think that Germany represented a challenge to their world hegemony. And slowly but surely they came to the decision that Germany must be confronted just as they had come to the same decision with regard to other countries—Spain and Portugal and especially France and now Germany.I think that Britain might possibly have accepted the German ascendance, but they had something that was close at hand, and that was the Franco-Russian Alliance. And they thought if they could hook in with that alliance, then they had the possibility of defeating Germany quickly and without too much trouble. And that is basically what they did....From the same documentaries WW1 conspiracy So and why Lord Walter Rothschild and his family are important in understanding world events.

Well, he and his family are some of the early financiers and backers of Cecil Rhodes and promoters of his last will and testament. And in the question of America being brought back into the British Empire, there are newspaper articles—there is one in 1902 where Lord Rothschild is saying, you know, “This would be a good thing to have America back in the British Empire.” He’s also the Lord Rothschild to whom the Balfour Declaration is addressed.So in 1917 therThe WWI Conspiracye’s a letter of agreement sent from the British government—from Arthur Balfour—to Lord Rothschild. Now Lord Rothschild and Arthur Balfour, they know each other. They have a long history together and there’s a lot of Fabian socialists in this whole story of what led up to World War One. Specifically with Balfour, he’s acting as an agent of the British government, saying, “We are gonna give away this land that’s not really ours, and we’re gonna give it to you guys in your group.” The problem is the British had also promised that same land to the Arabs, so now the Balfour Declaration is going against some of the foreign policy plans that they’ve already promised to these other countries.

The other interesting thing about the Balfour Declaration is it just had its hundredth anniversary, so they last year had a site that had the whole history of the Balfour Declaration. You could see the originals from Lord Rothschild and going to Lord Milner for changes and coming through Arthur Balfour and then being sent back as an official letter from the monarchy, basically. So that’s interesting. But there’s also interviews where the current Lord Rothschild—Lord Jacob Rothschild—comments on his ancestors’ history and how they brought about the Jewish state in 1947–48 because of the Balfour Declaration.

Great posts. Cheers. Here is a guy I have learned a fair bit from over the years. He has been jailed, on hunger strikes, battered to bits in jail by zionazi biker gangs in Australia, but hardly anyone knows him. All his stuff on youtube has been taken down, I found this on freedom tube. You might find it interesting.http://www.freedomtube.social/ftvPVideo-brendon-39470

The piece finishes by saying...So there’s a lot of history to unpack there, but most people, again, they’re not aware of the document let alone the very interesting history behind it let alone what that really means in the bigger story.

And the last paragraph sums you up Barry and a lot of others who went to Uni..You don't look at the counter arguments, accept historical records which means you are at best ignorant of fact of what is really going on or being taught or said.

Can you again explain to me why you think I endorse homophobic, racist xenophobes or spew Gobbles propaganda type screed when others simply spew either no screed at all to Daithis 'normal' screed...? What I do not endorse is how history is being very subjectivity taught in schools or Uni's today. If I say Zionism and Nazism are different cheeks of the same arse and you still can't or wont accept that concept, go back to the start of this reply and re open all the links and take you time and listen and read to what is being said...You want to play balls and not men. Then show me were anything I have posted is wrong..Source your counter narrative. Reading your rant's, I have learnt nothing but had my own reinforced.

Unless you can debunked anything I have posted by critically and objectivity examining it (means checking sources and documents) and not writing subjectivally as you normally do..I will stand over that I think you are a prick and can't think for yourself. THe time you spent in lecture's learning how repeat things and not think them through...I spent the same time not going to uni and learning how to think for myself...

You peddle misinformation on this site. Misinformation, whether it takes the form of Boris Johnson authorised lies on the EU, the output of Putin's Internet Research Ageny vaccine scares, Holocaust denial,9/11 'truther' confections and Pizzagate are by their its very nature is unfalsifiable. If only for that reason misinformation is harmful to democracy and informed, democratic debate.

My (perpetually aspifrant) scholarly modus operandi is to develop a hypothesis or start out with a basic argument, test my arguments against existing evidence, synthesise research that I do through that information gathering/contemplative process and then write up the case that I make.

Your jibes about my university education, my current place or country of residence and my nationality choices say more about you than it does about me.

You can spout whatever you wish on TPQ; I am not going to rise to or engage with them.

Tell me what information I have linked/source or other is false..I have asked you time and time again to disprove any thing I have said..best you can come up with is it..what..

You peddle misinformation on this site. Misinformation, whether it takes the form of Boris Johnson authorised lies on the EU, the output of Putin's Internet Research Ageny vaccine scares, Holocaust denial,9/11 'truther' confections and Pizzagate are by their its very nature is unfalsifiable. If only for that reason misinformation is harmful to democracy and informed, democratic debate.

I can't find any historian or other who has a different take of Balfour than mine..Not one, if you can show me someone who gives a completely different take on his 1917 letter to Zionist's, show me it. I read you ranting about Russiagate and how the Donald was a commie (remember it was Mueller who helped get Epstein his sweetheart deal in 2008..).As I said before Barry check out Judicial Watch and discover what they have unearthed about your poster girl through FOI's, making people swear under oath to tell the truth so help them God, court documents, her email servers and emails..You can believe Epstein was a cunt, Kincora, Boy's for sale, Vatican sex abuse, Orange Order and Irish Republican sex crimes, Franklin sex scandal but when it comes to the DNC its fake news....? Same as when you refuse to believe part (main) reason why Seth lost his life was because he exposed a lot of the wrong doings within the DNC election that your poster girl bombed in...Ask yourself why Debbie Wasserman Schultz was given the elbow...

By late Saturday, opposition inside the party "spread like wildfire," according to a Democratic source close to the matter. It resulted in a tense confrontation Sunday when officials told Wasserman Schultz she had to go. Wasserman Schultz had become toxic to supporters of Sanders, who accused her of rigging the Democratic presidential nominating process in favor of Clinton....

Tell me again Barry to don't think Bernie got stitched up...Show me once were Wikileaks got a story wrong. I will make it easy for you..Tell me what you think happened on 9/11..Source everything and present them to be tested..

Your jibes about my university education, my current place or country of residence and my nationality choices say more about you than it does about me.

They aren't jibes Barry. It is my opinion. I have read almost every article that you have graced the TPQ with..And your arguments are full of holes, one sided and as a rule of thumb all about the holocaust and what the IHRA think and when anyone presents a new set of facts that disprove your claim by offering a counter narrative you try and shout them down..You do not look at their evidence (although we know you claim to). What nationality Barry, you have more titles than the holy trinity, recently you added Ulster into your equation. Nether Ulster nor the EU are nationalities. That leaves two and your argument for having both Irish and British passports doesn't add up. Both afford you the same protect and rights in traveling to most of the same countries on this rock..Brexit hasn't kicked in, so that argument wont pass a litmus text, my guess is you had both passports long before Brexit came in to play Neither you or me can or anyone tell how that will pan out.

Lastly enjoy being in a minority of one over your Irexit position.

I would rather be in a minority of 1 and right than in a majority who act like a flock of sheep..

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Anthony McIntyre

Former IRA volunteer and ex-prisoner, spent 18 years in Long Kesh, 4 years on the blanket and no-wash/no work protests which led to the hunger strikes of the 80s. Completed PhD at Queens upon release from prison. Left the Republican Movement at the endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement, and went on to become a journalist. Co-founder of The Blanket, an online magazine that critically analyzed the Irish peace process. Lead researcher for the Belfast Project, an oral history of the Troubles.